Saturday, 19 May 2012

A straight debate

A few weeks ago Stuart Campbell, who blogs at Wings over Scotland, invited me to debate with him in the restricted format he proposed in this post. We've now held that debate, and the result is below.

Question 1

DH
I'm a devolutionist. I see great value in the devolved legislatures of
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Devolution has been embraced most
firmly in Scotland, not least because of our already established
separate legal and social structures which were always painfully
administered from the old Scottish Office and are far more effectively
led from our parliament. The 1998 Scotland Act's system of reservations
rather than devolutions means the vast majority of Scotland's every day
leadership comes from Holyrood. And the 2012 Scotland Act has reduced
those reservations still further. The present Scottish Government has an
absolute majority who are incredibly loyal to its leadership. It has a
legislative free-rein and a budget of £30 billion a year. And it claims
to be determined to act in the interests of Scots.

So my question is this: is it not utterly transparent, and grotesquely
hypocritical, for that government to be effectively sitting on its hands
for the last year and the next two, to continue to blame Westminster and
paint a picture of a nation held back, to ignore - and even allow to
wither - the economic levers at its fingertips, and to instead gamble
the welfare of Scots on the prize of independence (which a majority of
Scots have consistently said they do not want) rather than to work as
hard as possible to improve the lot of Scots right now, with the
extensive powers it already has?

SC
No. It's a bit disappointing that you've opened with a "Have you
stopped beating your wife?" question, because clearly I absolutely
disagree that the Scottish Government is doing any such thing at
all. What are these levers it's allowing to wither? There are
currently no tax-varying powers available to the Parliament, for
example, and there won't be for several years. The budget is
decreasing in real terms, and costs are rising. If you know where
a few billion extra pounds can be located, I'm sure the Scottish
Government will be extremely keen to hear from you.

It seems to be the consensus of opinion that the SNP was
re-elected so comprehensively in 2011 not as a result of a surge
in support for independence but because it had done a good job of
running the economy in the preceding four years, in difficult
circumstances. Your assertion, then, wouldn't seem to be supported
by the electorate thus far, and your claims about what's going to
happen in the next two years are obviously pure speculation with
no basis in fact, so I'm not sure how useful they are to a
constructive debate.

The fact is, independence would put billions directly back into
the Scottish economy BEFORE you start talking about oil or
renewables or other such variable income sources. The likely
savings on defence alone would be in the region of £5bn plus in a
single Parliamentary term - enough to pay for GARL, EARL, the new
Forth crossing and the dualling of the A9, with probably enough
left over to finish off the Great Tram Folly that Labour insisted
on foisting on Edinburgh, spitefully setting fire to almost a
billion pounds purely to give the SNP a bloody nose.

(On top of the hundreds of millions the Lab-Lib administrations of
1999-2007 handed back to London because, astonishingly, they
couldn't think of anything to spend it on. What a shame they
didn't invest it in, say, building social housing that would have
alleviated some of the pressure currently being piled onto the
poor. How many houses was it in Labour's last term of office? Six,
wasn't it?)

As for whether "the majority of Scots don't want independence",
we'll find out whether that's true or not pretty soon - the SNP,
after all, aren't the ones who've desperately fought tooth and
nail to avoid having it put to the test all this time. But I have
no intention of taking their answer for granted.

DH
It was more of a "why are you still beating your wife?" question,
since the beating is going on in full public view. The Scottish
Government's inaction and picking of fights has been clearly
observable, and it's a pity you're in denial about it. But you are
certainly singing from the same hymn sheet as Scottish Ministers,
constantly regurgitating different versions of the argument that
Scotland's devolved government is powerless and independence would
solve all.

"There are currently no tax-varying powers available to the
Parliament" you say. This must come as some surprise to the Scottish
people, who voted in the referendum to grant Parliament tax varying
powers. And indeed a quick check of the Scotland Act 1998 confirms
that those powers remain in place, despite the SNP's efforts to
denude Parliament of its right to change tax rates by refusing to
fund the administrative upkeep of that power. You want to pretend
that the only economic levers the Scottish Government has are coming
under the new Scotland Act in 2015. You want to pretend that the
Scottish Government cannot act. These things are simply untrue.

It's a choice. The Scottish Government's overriding aim, confirmed
time and again, is to secure a yes vote in 2014. It has made it
abundantly clear that it prefers to blame and pick fights to bolster
its chances in 2014 rather than knuckle down and work at solving
problems with the powers it has. It prefers to highlight differences
and separations rather than find common ground and improve the lives
of Scots.

Economic development in Scotland is entirely under the control of
the Scottish Government. SE and HIE are having their budgets cut
while failing to deliver the entrepreneurship growth which the
Scottish economy desperately needs. Their biggest output is not new
companies or new markets, but a band of mostly publicly funded
experts in grant applications, who have cultivated the personal
contacts and bureaucratic gymnastics to win grants, creating a
self-supporting circle of established companies living off the state
and the EU. The Scottish Government could and should take action
here, but they aren't doing so.

The Scottish Government's budget can also be used, as was shown in
the cynical bribe just before the local elections, to fund
employment support schemes. But instead of a strategy across
Scotland, we have a media campaign, re-badging monies already
committed and giving the appearance of action while taking no
responsibility for outcomes. The Scottish Government could decide to
take this seriously across the country, but they are choosing not
to.

There are hundreds of other examples of areas where risks could be
taken and success sought. The plain truth is that the Scottish
Government's avowed policy for this term is to do nothing to
prejudice their chances of a yes in the independence referendum.
That selfish single focus is a betrayal of those who voted for them
to lead the devolved government of Scotland. It is in my view
utterly transparent and grotesquely hypocritical.

SC
Holyrood's tax-varying powers are of course NOT in practice
available at present, whoever you blame for the fact. And you know
as well as I do that any party which stood on a platform of raising
tax to pay for services would get slaughtered at the polls -
presumably you recall the SNP's "penny for Scotland" campaign that
was such a resounding success in 1999. So what you appear to be
suggesting is that a party should stand on a dishonest manifesto of
not raising income tax, then sneakily whack it up the minute it gets
into Bute House. Hmm, honourable.

I also don't think it helps the debate if you just tell flat-out
lies like "The SNP's avowed policy is to do nothing to damage the
Yes vote." Firstly, I'd love to see you quote the SNP leadership
actually "avowing" that anywhere. And secondly, the first 12 months
of the majority government have seen the passing of two hugely
controversial and divisive bills - minimum pricing and the
anti-sectarianism act - with another one hot on their heels in the
form of the gay marriage consultation.

Every one of those threatens to cost the SNP substantial amounts of
support, or already has done - my personal view is that the
anti-sectarianism bill contributed significantly to the
worse-than-expected result in the Glasgow council elections, for
example. And gay marriage will beyond much doubt be the most
contentious bill EVER brought before the Scottish Parliament. So
accusing them of doing nothing to frighten the horses before 2014 is
a quite staggeringly dishonest reversal of the plainly-visible
facts.

To be honest, though, it's hard to see any material arguments to
constructively respond to in amongst the above - it's just vague,
empty rhetoric of the sort Labour specialises in while it's trying
to come up with a solid definable policy position on anything. Or
perhaps more truthfully, to *avoid* coming up with any - it's hard
to have your policies subjected to scrutiny and criticism if nobody
knows what they are. Tuition fees? Dunno. Replacement for the
Council Tax? Dunno, spent five years talking about it and then gave
up. Council Tax up, down or frozen in the meantime? Dunno. Trident
replacement? Dunno. Which additional powers should come to the
Scottish Parliament? Dunno.

Scottish Labour's rallying call is "We don't know what we'd do, but
it wouldn't be whatever the SNP are doing." Blanket kneejerk
negativity might, in a very limited sense, be a useful opposition
strategy, but it doesn't make much of a debating position, let alone
an inspiring manifesto for government. And even after the 2011
result, that's a lesson Labour still don't seem to want to learn.

Question 2

SC
The thing I really don't understand about Scottish Labour is why you're
so determined to have the South-East of England choose Scotland's
government. All the most important decisions concerning Scotland -
taxation, excise duty, welfare, defence, etc - are still made in London
by a government that by definition is overwhelmingly elected by English
voters (outnumbering everyone else put together by 5 to 1). Those voters
are much more inclined to vote for the Conservatives than Scottish ones
are, which means that Scotland spends years suffering needlessly under
Tory governments it overwhelmingly rejected at the polls.

An independent Scottish Government would - and this is of course an
assertion, but it's beyond any *sensible* argument - be a centre-left
social-democratic one for at least the foreseeable future. (I'm going to
slightly generously grant that Scottish Labour, unlike the UK party, are
still just about on the left, and also to assume, perhaps
optimistically, that you're not going to be so blatantly disingenuous or
at odds with reality as to claim that the UK as a whole is no more
likely to vote Tory than Scotland is.)

Even you can't realistically believe it'd be possible for Labour to win
every Westminster election, so why are you so absolutely insistent on
inflicting Tory governments on Scotland? Is it a triumph of blind
ideology over practical reality ("We CAN win every election!"), or do
you just think Scottish Labour are so abysmally inept that they couldn't
be trusted to run a convivial evening in a brewery, let alone a nation
you lived in?

That's a little leading, of course, so let me ask it in a fairer way: To
you as a Scottish Labour activist, is the (rationally indisputable)
increased risk of having a Tory government make all the most important
decisions about Scotland really a price worth paying to keep Scotland in
the Union?

DH
No. And if your hypothesis bore any relationship to reality that might
be a fair criticism of "unionism" in its broadest and least existent
sense. But it doesn't, so it isn't.

Firstly, you associate geography and nationality with political belief.
This is frankly ludicrous. The political beliefs of individuals are
constantly changing - as current UK-wide polling shows - and are
affected by a whole range of factors, including prejudices, life
experience, study, local, national and international events, and so on.
The idea that we can carve up chunks of land and call some of them left
wing and some of them right wing is one of the fundamental untruths at
the heart of the independence message. People move, areas change, events
happen. And parties also change and remould themselves to follow the
people. One needs only to note the recent surges in SNP support and
plunges in Lib Dem votes to see that describing any geographical area as
being inclined one way politically is pure folly. This is as true for a
nation as it is for a suburb. Politics does not change at Berwick.
Presume political allegiance at your peril.

Second, you ignore the distorting effect on the traditional left/right
split exerted by the existence of a party focused on the separate axis
of nationalism and independence. The SNP may have adopted the mantle of
a centre-left party in order to take on Labour and the Lib Dems at the
domestic polls, but it is in reality a rainbow alliance of left and
right, united by that single shared aim of independence. So it has a
skewing effect on any assessment of how right- or left-wing Scots in
general are. To put it simply, there are plenty of Tories in Scotland;
not all of them currently vote Tory.

(And in case you protest that the SNP is truly left-wing and social
democratic to its core, let's not forget that it has a relentlessly
centralising agenda against local government, and that its leadership is
on record calling for lower corporation tax and the laughable absurdity
of Laffer curve economics.)

I believe passionately in Labour ideals. I'll fight to make Labour
relevant and effective, and I'll work hard to take that message to
voters across the UK in UK elections, across Scotland in Scottish
elections, and across Edinburgh in local elections. What I will not do
is give up on the UK in order to make it easier to win in Scotland.
Because everyone counts.

The argument that says we should vote for independence to avoid Tory
rule is an utterly broken one. We should not be trying to win political
arguments by drawing new lines on the map excluding places where the
people we don't like tend to live! We should be trying to win political
arguments by addressing the issues at their heart. Unless we're going to
do that, then it's time you guys were honest and drew your Tory
exclusion line north of Dumfriesshire.

SC
"Firstly, you associate geography and nationality with political belief."

Yes, I do, because *that's the way it is*. For my entire life (and
yours), Scotland has consistently rejected the Tories - the best
they've ever done since I was born was 22 MPs out of 72 in 1979 -
while England has regularly elected them. That's not nationalist
propaganda, it's not some wild assertion plucked out of the air, it's
a plain and simple measurable fact. To clarify: I'm NOT saying there's
something inherent or genetic about being born or living in Scotland
that makes you left-wing - I'm merely saying that's how it's been for
all of your life and all of my life, it's how it is now, and it's how
it's going to be for the foreseeable future, so we might as well deal
with the reality rather than railing against it.

Weirdly, it seems to actually *upset* you that Scotland so
consistently votes for left-wing parties, because it blows apart your
ideological myth of internationalism. Sure, it'd be lovely if everyone
lived together in one giant global brother/sisterhood and there were
no borders - but we don't, and there ARE borders, so we might as well
take advantage of them when the opportunity arises. Nobody, contrary
to your somewhat bizarre claim, is proposing drawing any new lines on
a map - as far as I'm aware independence would start on the current
line from the Solway to the Tweed that's been there for hundreds of
years - but I don't see why someone in Arbroath should have to endure
the misery of a Tory government just because someone in Halifax has
to, or why you would condemn five million of your own people to
needless suffering just to make a point.

I do agree, though, that "we should be trying to win political
arguments by addressing the issues at their heart", which is why - as
someone currently living in England - I'm desperate to see an
independent social-democratic Scotland set an example that would
demonstrate how socialist values CAN work, and thereby inspire the
left down here to abandon the neo-Tory "consensus" it's so cravenly
adopted in its desperate pursuit of power and offer a genuine
alternative to the current three flavours of Conservatism that are
dragging the UK into the abyss. You, on the other hand, appear instead
to have some masochistic attachment to being tied to a vastly bigger
country that's been stubbornly resistant to Labour values for a third
of a century and shows no sign of changing any time soon.

(The lack of self-awareness, incidentally, in your protestations that
the SNP encompasses relative left and right factions is mindboggling.
Of course it does - ALL parties have a spectrum of internal views -
but there isn't a single SNP MP or MSP anywhere near as far to the
right as Tony Blair, James Purnell and David Blunkett were, and the
likes of Tom Harris still are. If you're deluding yourself to the
contrary, you may be beyond help.)

And just by the by: Are you embarrassed that Ed Miliband - leader of a
party whose emblem is a red rose, whose banners are red and which
still closes its conferences with a rousing rendition of "The Red
Flag" - is so ashamed and horrified by the notion that anyone might
call him "Red Ed"?

DHHmm. We seem to have lost the high-minded ideal of debate here, with you
reduced to traducing individuals in lieu of actually having an argument.
I can immediately think of several SNP MSPs far more right wing on
economic and social issues than any of those you mentioned, and I'm
entirely confident in my view that the SNP has a far broader spread to
the right than Labour does. The notion that the SNP is a centre-left
party is a convenience. The SNP is, and always has been, a single-issue
pressure group, and it will do anything to achieve its sole aim.
Including doing harm to Scots by picking fights instead of solving
problems if it thinks it can get away with it.

The central point here is that, protest as you may, Scotland has never
voted with one voice for anything. Scotland does not have a single
political affiliation, or even a predominant one. We are a plural
society with a wide range of views represented, just as the whole of the
UK is. We have a history of more social conservatism than the rest of
the UK. And it is utterly foolhardy for anyone to predict that an
independent Scotland would be left aligned. People will vote for the
leaders and policies they think are best and this assessment will change
over time. It is monumentally more likely that, like the UK and almost
every other modern democracy, an independent Scotland would enter a
swing cycle between left and right, alternating between Labour and Tory
governments once the SNP had served its purpose and dissolved to a rump.

I find it incomprehensible for anyone who claims to be left wing to want
to create another island of self-interest in the world - another market,
another reason to justify limiting workers' rights in the name of
remaining competitive, another government giving bungs to multinationals
to pinch jobs off its neighbours - an island of self-interest with no
influence at all on a global scale.

You originally asked if I thought allowing the possibility of Tory rule
was a price worth paying. The truth is that wherever you draw your
borders, democracy means you cannot prevent the Tories being a threat.
The way we will defeat the Tories isn't by retreating into a corner; it
is by fighting for our values in union.

Question 3

DH
The Scottish Government's consultation into the referendum has just
closed. While the public were allegedly being asked about the timing of
the vote, the Scottish Government leaked the date it would be held, so
it's fairly clear that decisions on the referendum will be made
exclusively in the interests of attempting to achieve a success for the
SNP, rather than on the basis of the opinions given by the public.

With that in mind, and with Labour riding high in the UK polls, the
2-question option which was seemingly dismissed by senior SNP figures
including Nicola Sturgeon some months ago rears its head again. The
thinking is, apparently, that the "keep the Tories out" argument which
we were just discussing will have far less potency in 2014 if it looks
like Labour will win the UK election in 2015.

So my question is a simple one. Do you agree with me that the referendum
question should be a simple choice between a clearly defined
independence and the status quo, with no "devo max" or similar to muddy
the waters?

SC
Yes. And so, I promise you, do the SNP leadership (who I've never met
or spoken to). I've explained why on Wings Over Scotland many times,
and it baffles me beyond words that anyone who's thought about it for
more than 30 seconds could ever genuinely imagine otherwise.

Again, though, I wish you'd stop saying things that are flat-out
untrue. The Scottish Government did NOT "leak the date". The Sun took
a guess, the SNP didn't - and indeed, couldn't, because the
consultation was still going on - either confirm or deny it. We can
argue the toss, but I'll happily bet you 50 quid here and now that the
referendum WON'T be on the day the Sun claimed, for any number of
reasons. Deal?

DH
The date printed by the Sun was leaked by someone in the SNP. It may or
may not turn out to be the actual date of the referendum, so I'll
decline your deal thanks, but I'd happily take your 50 quid on it
landing within a month either side of that date. The idea that on launch
day of a paper born out of the shame of the lies and criminality of the
News of the World, during the Leveson inquiry, the Sun would make up
something so deniable, is laughable. And indeed the lack of a denial
from the SNP that the source was theirs speaks volumes.

In any event, I'm glad to have established common ground on the need for
a simple choice between a clearly defined independence and the status
quo. I look forward to the clear definition of independence emerging as
a firm proposal well in advance of the date. Too many flags have been
flown and u-turns made in recent months for Scots to have any certainty
as to what independence would really look like. And it's vital that we
can judge on the facts, not on some hand-waving definition of a land of
milk and honey.

So what do you think will happen if, as I predict, come 2014 Labour's UK
poll strength continues to be high, and referendum polling continues to
suggest that Scots favour being part of the UK? Do you agree with me
that Alex Salmond, ever the shrewd operator, will far prefer to find a
reason why the vote cannot go ahead, than lose and have nowhere else to
go? Do you think a reason will be found to tie up the referendum in the
courts and delay it beyond 2015, and if so, what do you think it might be?

SC
No, I don't. (In what's rapidly becoming a Scottish Labour trademark,
I've repeatedly offered a wager to that effect to your compatriot Ian
Smart, who keeps loudly insisting that the referendum isn't going
happen. He won't put his money where his mouth is either...) And as for
the poll being within a month either side of the Sun's date, well, duh -
of course it will. There's only about a two-month window it could
POSSIBLY happen in.

Salmond said it would be "well into the second half" of the Parliament,
which takes us to early summer 2014 at the minimum, and it can't go into
2015 because that would run uncomfortably close to the General Election.
(Plus you don't want to be holding a referendum in the Scottish winter,
when there's a good chance of people getting snowed out of polling
stations.)

Allowing for all the stuff that's going to be happening in spring/summer
(World Cup, Ryder Cup, Commonwealth Games, school holidays, plus the
desire to avoid having it around the Bannockburn anniversary because
even Brian Taylor recognises that the SNP aren't that stupid),
mid-September to mid-November 2014 is pretty much the only period that
fits the required criteria. (In fact it's hard to see it being as late
as November, again because of the danger of bad weather, but the first
half is just about feasible. I originally guessed at St Andrew's Day,
but on reflection that's just too late in the year and too close to
Christmas.)

The Sun are just as capable of working all that out as I am, without
needing anything to be "leaked" by anyone, and amazingly enough they
plumped for a date bang in the middle of that range so they'd be as
close as possible whatever happened. But you made an allegation based
on a groundless assertion about a specific date so that you could smear
the SNP, rather than reaching the obvious, logical and altogether less
sinister conclusion. I don't know if it's cheap and cynical opportunism
or if Scottish Labour are just genuinely so paranoid that they see evil
wee Salmond-faced demons everywhere they look - both would be entirely
in character for the party - but either way it's predictable and boring.

Question 4

SC
I'm intrigued by your comment back in Question 2 about "fighting for our
values in union". The independence debate isn't really a fight between
"nationalists" and "Unionists", but one between Scottish nationalists
and British nationalists. You've described yourself as an
internationalist, and as far as I know you subscribe to the
much-repeated Labour line that there's no difference between a low-paid
worker in Barnsley and one in Banff, yet you exclude ones in Bruges or
Boston from your "union" - I've never seen Labour or any other so-called
"Unionists" advocating a World Government, or a single European
super-state, or a 1984-style Oceania uniting the English-speaking world.

The inescapable conclusion is therefore that "Unionists" DO still accept
the concept of individual nations, it's just that they've decided
Britain rather than Scotland is their own one. That being the case, can
you tell us how you arrived at this seemingly-arbitrary choice? Are
there specific criteria (eg nothing below, say, a 30m population counts
as a legitimate nation), is it just a gut feeling, did you toss a coin,
or is there something else?

DH
My view is that the fewer islands of self-interest we create in the
world the better. Since Scottish independence would create a new island
of self-interest, I'm against it. Uniting helps ordinary people and
shares effort; dividing pits ordinary people against each other and
wastes effort. It's a simple as that as far as I'm concerned.

You're flat out wrong to claim that everyone is a nationalist. I'm not
one, and indeed I'd estimate a substantial proportion of folk on both
sides of the independence debate aren't nationalists either. The fact
that I have a nationality does not make me a nationalist, just as the
fact that I have a race does not make me a racist.

As far as world governments go, I'd like to see the workers own the
means of production everywhere on earth; we could then see where that
might lead. I'm comfortable with the idea of a federal Europe in time. I
believe that the richest countries can and should unite with the poorest
and share the world's resources. None of these things are as ludicrous
as the scorn in your opening paragraph seeks to pretend.

The fundamental point is simple: co-operation is good for people, bad
for profits; competition is bad for people, good for profits. I'm on the
side of the people. The union is on the side of the people. The last
thing we need is more islands of self-interest in the world.

SC
I was with you all the way up to "the Union is on the side of the
people". Where in the name of Wee Archie Gemmill do you get an idea as
wildly at odds with reality as that when you live in Britain, one of
the most unequal countries in the civilised world, and which is
getting more unequal by the day because all three of its main
political parties are business-friendly, profit-worshipping neoliberals?

You do know that inequality ROSE under 13 years of a UK Labour
government, and is heading into the stratosphere under the Tories,
yes? At some point aren't you going to have to come to terms with the
fact that the idealised 1960s-style Labour Party in your head bears
almost no resemblance whatever to the one that actually contests
elections?

(Then again, if you honestly believe that the richest countries are
going to "unite with the poorest and share the world's resources" any
time between now and the end of eternity, perhaps not - are you
interested in purchasing some magic beans, by any chance? I'm aware
that this debate is becoming more of an argument, but I really don't
know if it's possible to hold a sensible discussion with anybody who
could say that with a straight face. As pressure on resources starts
to really mount in the next 50 years and the world population goes
through the roof, most rational people are predicting a dramatic
upsurge in wars, not the sudden outbreak of a new Summer Of Love. The
world is completely incapable of getting along even when there's
plenty of food and water and oil for everyone - you really think those
things becoming scarcer will make the people who have them MORE
inclined to give them away?)

DH
What an incredibly disappointing response. Not only have you ignored
almost all the points I raised including my direct answer to your
question, but you've resorted to the sort of sneering self-satisfaction
which typifies so much of SNP and nationalist politics. At best, your
argument can be summarised as "there's no point in trying to make the
world better, let's pull up the drawbridge on our little patch and sod
the rest".

I would point out that while the gap between rich and poor rose under
the last Labour government, which is an important measure, the more
significant fact is that over a million families with children were
lifted out of poverty thanks to the redistributive policies of Labour
during the ten years following 1997. That's not profit-worshipping
neoliberalism, that's the biggest redistribution of wealth this country
has seen in more than 60 years. And every time achievements like the
minimum wage and tax credits are ignored by someone like you trying to
tar all parties with the same brush, I know I'm talking to a
point-scorer not a debater.

In my time debating with pro-independence folk I have come across a lot
of people who can at least justify on principle why they think
independence for Scotland is a good idea. I have disagreed, on
principle, but I can respect their views. I was wary of entering into
this discussion with you because from past interactions I suspected that
you would not be one of those people. How right I was. We're done.

25 comments:

Hi Dunc. Once again I'm sad to see you haven't been able to resist inserting outright lies into your side of the debate. I didn't "ignore" the minimum wage or tax credits, because you didn't raise them, instead embarking on a bizarre fantasy of a caring, sharing future world straight out of a fairy tale.

Both are clearly good things in themselves, but tax credits are an appallingly-implemented one which have terrified lots of people out of claiming them for fear of being landed with a huge bill for "overpayments", and the minimum wage is a sticking plaster over a shotgun wound. I imagine my attitude to the LIVING wage is exactly the same as yours - it should be one of the very first priorities for any government - and I'm only sad that after 13 years of Labour there's a gap between the minimum wage and the living wage in the first place. The fact that Labour acknowledges the "minimum wage" isn't - by some distance - a liveable one is one of the lasting legacies of shame of the Blair/Brown years.

Oh, and given that you accept the gap between rich and poor grew under Labour, where has all this "redistributed wealth" that's lifted children out of poverty been redistributed FROM, since it's not the rich?

And of course, you again dodged my question - in what conceivable way is the Union "on the side of the people"? I accept that you think *Labour* is, even if I disagree, but *the Union* specifically is the thing that brings us regular Tory governments, because it's dominated by Tory-inclined English voters.

Even if you're sticking to your absurd denial of the empirically-obvious fact that the UK elects more Tory governments than Scotland and will continue to do so, *the Union has a Tory government right now*, one which Scotland overwhelmingly rejected at both Westminster and Holyrood elections. The only conclusion it's factually possible to draw is therefore that you think the Tories are "on the side of the people", which is a little odd.

You ignored them by implying that Labour did nothing to address inequality, which simply isn't true.

And if you can't understand how wealth can be redistributed from the rich to the poor whilst the gap increases, then you need to brush up on your maths. The very rich got very much richer, but Labour redistributed some of that wealth to ensure that the very poor got richer too. And I'm proud of that.

But as a body politic, Scotland does exist - our political values and goals (constitution aside) are clearly differentiated from those of England.

Now of course there is some ramping at the edges, rather than a sharp discontinuity 2 miles north of Berwick, so you could easily shift the border back and forward quite a bit, but that's true for all geo-socio/political groups (language works the same - German and Dutch are different languages, but listening to them at the border you'd find it hard to know which side you're on)

I didn't IMPLY they'd done nothing to address inequality, I came right out and said they'd actively made it WORSE, which is a fact even you accept. The details are fairly irrelevant to the point.

"The very rich got very much richer"

And if it wasn't from the poor, where did THAT money come from, pray tell? I'm not the one with wonky arithmetic here - if the rich get richer, by definition that extra wealth can only come from the poor. The constant upward siphoning of wealth is the core fundamental principle of capitalism.

So what you're essentially saying is that under Labour, the rich took £100 from the adult poor, but the government redistributed £5 of it to poor children. The money wasn't redistributed from the rich to the poor, but from the childless poor to poor families, and that certainly WAS a characteristic trait of the last Labour administration.

"But as a body politic, Scotland does exist - our political values and goals (constitution aside) are clearly differentiated from those of England."

That's the thing - despite decades of staggeringly conclusive evidence, Duncan simply doesn't accept that that's true. As I said in the debate, I'm not claiming there's something in "Scottish DNA" that makes it so, I'm saying that's just the way it's panned out for all manner of social reasons.

But acknowledging the real-world fact would interfere with Dunc's ideological principles, so he puts his blind eye to the telescope and ends up looking a bit daft by insisting that Scotland is as likely to elect Tory governments as the UK.

So no wealth is ever created in your version of capitalism? Fascinating. You're wrong on this.

And it is staggeringly obvious that observing what has happened in Scottish politics in the past is not a proof that Scotland is a voting bloc. People change how they vote due to circumstances. They always have. If you think Scots would vote the same as they do now in an independent Scotland you're deluding yourself.

No. Wealth is like energy - it's based on a finite resource and as such can't be created, only moved around. Very surprised to see a self-styled socialist subscribing to the arch-capitalist myth that you can just invent it out of nothing.

"what has happened in Scottish politics in the past is not a proof that Scotland is a voting bloc"

Absolutely nobody said it was - the triumphs of the SNP in 2007 and 2011 are testament to that. But its centre is calibrated significantly to the left of that of the UK, and has been for the entire modern era. Everyone goes on about 1955, but (a) it's the ONLY time the Tories have ever won a plurality of seats in Scotland in the last century, and (b) they still did better in the UK than in Scotland (55% to 51%). There has, as far as I'm aware, NEVER been a SINGLE election in the last 100 years in which the Tories did better in Scotland than in the UK.

It's always weird to see Labour clinging desperately to the hope of a hypothetical Scottish Tory government as their great defence of the Union.

I've taken a look over the net at some of this guy's debates/arguments and they are all tediously similar. Some of the insults he throws are nothing short of repugnantly fascist in their extremism. For someone who is over 40 it's nothing short of disturbing.

Examples on his own site are headlines such as "The Scots are Cringing Pitiful Scum" and refering to Northern Irish people voting for Sinn Fein as "spectacularly retarded."

Well done for trying to engage him like he had a grounding in humanity. But I have become increasingly convinced that that just isn't possible with this type of hypocritical misanthrope.

No-one could ever accuse you of making ad-hominem attacks or completely ignorig the substantive debate :-p

Duncan, interesting debate but I got a bit dumbstruck at the part where you thought it was ok that the gap between rich and poor got wider under Labour because even those at the bottom ended up richer than before. Richer than before in absolute terms perhaps but that's not something I would expect a Labour man to be proud of especially not one who argues only Labour can be trusted to address INEQUALITY.

As for your refusal to accept there may be a separate political will in Scotland, why would you be a devolutionist in that case? Or can there only be a separate will on devolved issues but not in terms of macro-economic and foreign policy etc?

"As for your refusal to accept there may be a separate political will in Scotland, why would you be a devolutionist in that case? Or can there only be a separate will on devolved issues but not in terms of macro-economic and foreign policy etc?"

Now THERE'S an interesting point, especially as Dunc thinks "The last thing we need is more islands of self-interest in the world". Shouldn't we indeed therefore logically reverse devolution and handle everything from Westminster?

(As a predecessor to Westminster becoming itself a devolved administration in a federal Europe, and presumably so on and so forth until we're all one happy global nation with a single government, sharing all our means of production and resources and hugging.)

"My Scottish Labour Party is arguably the only party in Scotland which truly believes in the devolution of power, while the SNP continues an increasingly centralist agenda."

So Johann wants to devolve more power away from the centre, while Duncan wants to increasingly centralise towards a federal Europe and NOT "create any more islands of self-interest". It's a puzzler. I often find myself wondering if Dunc is a member of a completely different Labour Party to the one we read about in the papers.

Just wanted to say fair enough debate; didn't read it all but apart from a few barbed jabs from either side it got me thinking about how both sides think. I am curious about one thing though. I totally agree with what Duncan Hothersall says in the following quote.

" Scotland does not have a single political affiliation, or even a predominant one. We are a plural society with a wide range of views represented, just as the whole of the UK is. We have a history of more social conservatism than the rest of the UK. And it is utterly foolhardy for anyone to predict that an independent Scotland would be left aligned. People will vote for the leaders and policies they think are best and this assessment will change over time. "

Therefore, I cannot fathom why he goes on to write the following.

" I look forward to the clear definition of independence emerging as a firm proposal well in advance of the date. "

Assuming that he actually agrees with himself in the former is it not actually inconsistent to ask for a firm proposal of what independence will be like in the future? Whatever the actual proposal offered by the SNP Government at the time of the referendum vote I hold the right, as does any citizen in this clearly plural society, to hold whichever parties are in Government to account as long as one lives. The actual proposal by the SNP Government is just one view. The type of Scotland that will surface will change all the time. The relationship with the Rest of the UK will ultimately feature strongly in post independence elections and the people will vote for the party they feel represents their views. It's the principle of independence that is paramount. The actual details will be moulded in time; just as the Union has.

I actually disagree with the SNP asserting what an independent Scotland would look like. It's plain wrong. It's for all of us to assert our own individual opinions on what it will be.

My other question is this: What is it that the Scottish Labour Party want with regards to what level of Devolution for Scotland?

Johann Lamont wrote an article the other day. She's been Leader some seven months, the prospect of how Scotland is governed constitutionally has been saturating the news yet I still don't really know what levers she would like/not like for Scotland. All I hear is "there is a need to have an honest debate", "the acid test should be what is good for Scotland", "we need to use the powers we have now" etc. The things is, nobody on this earth could disagree with any of that. We're having the debate now. Johann Lamont is a leader of a political party and wants people to vote for her to lead Scotland. She must have a broadbrush view of what powers she does or doesn't want. Everyone in Scotland does. She says we should have debate; we need to have her opinion to inform it!

actually reading the comments it seems it did just descend into shouting. However, sometimes in order to gauge truly what people think they need to let their blood boil a bit. Am still interested by the debate, cheers for publishing. I also think that both of you agree on more than you disagree on. If Scotland could only just work together we'd be in a better place.

I also think that RevStu, although perhaps in an inflammatory manner has hit home a good point. If there is no body of Scottish politik (am not saying whether I personally agree or not with that assertion, by the way) what was the point of Devolution in the first place? Surely the Devolution was to allow the people of Scotland to decide things differently from Westminster? But why bother? Why was Scotland so 'special'? The Scottish Labour party has already conceded the principle of devolution to an area called Scotland. Surely, independence is just the extreme variation of this exact same principle?

"I actually disagree with the SNP asserting what an independent Scotland would look like. It's plain wrong. It's for all of us to assert our own individual opinions on what it will be."

Indeed. I've made exactly that point numerous times:

http://wingsland.podgamer.com/missing-the-point/

Independence determines one thing and one thing only: who has the right to elect Scotland's government - Scots, or Tory voters in England?

"I also think that both of you agree on more than you disagree on"

No doubt. I certainly consider myself a socialist and I'm sure Dunc does too. It's just a shame the party he's determined to cling blindly to long since abandoned the idea, and that he hates the SNP so much he can't see that - while far from outright socialist - it's now by a significant distance, and by countless impartial assessments, the most left-wing party in the entire UK political mainstream.